October 15, 2016

The ‘countdown’ :-(

Well I’m back online at last, sad I know but it was a pure joy to see that little yellow warning triangle with the exclamation mark in the middle disappear from the system tray. I’ve been switching my laptop on every hour or so for the past fortnight forlornly hoping it wouldn’t be there.

Well tonight it isn’t and hasn’t been for 24 hours now, sadly its absence meant I’d a whole load of mail to deal with, bills to pay and forms to fill. Hopefully I’ll have all that sorted over the next day or so and things will return to normal.

To be honest, had I just been able to access the bank, email and a few web pages I’d have been quite content. Truth is it’s been great without it in so many ways. For a start the weather has been absolutely fabulous and with both myself and son being on holiday we’ve got loads done. We’ve also been on our own for a weeks so not had to keep regular meal times as I’ve been in charge of the cooking.

So we’ve been gradually eating our way through this haunch of venison out of the freezer on account of us having more to put in Casseroles, curries, ‘hot pots’ and all manner of deer based dishes keeping us full of protein on what’s been a pretty physical week or so.

We’ve been plagued by deer around the house, in the garden and even within the hen enclosure which has a 6’ fence!!! Trouble is, the one in the fallow hen field was out of season and the freezer was full of pig at the time. Anyway, with the season for stags open as of the end of September and the freezer now being somewhat depleted we’ve been awaiting one to set foot in the garden or at least near to it. Sure enough nearly every night we’ve had no end of hinds munching away at the hawthorn and plants but the stags have kept to the higher ground and never been near enough when it was light enough for a clear shot.

There’s been at least three around the croft with two more over on the Torran hill and at least two more to the south and one over towards Manish. We know this cos my son and I have been spending all that ‘Internet time’ wandering the hills during the early morning and evenings. Not to actually shoot one but just to keep an eye on them and find out where they’re coming from and going to.

I’m not really into this ‘stalking’ carry on when it comes to dragging a beast miles over the heather, better to shoot one near the back door, far easier on the back

We have however had a great time, seen much and observed their regular routes and wallows.

My wife and I put an awful lot of work into the chalet and it was our good neighbours home for around seven years so you can understand why I’ve not had much enthusiasm for clearing it up.

We’ve made good progress though and the eight RSJ’s that provided the base will be going into the new 6kW wind turbine base.

The fire had badly distorted most of them so I cut four in half for ease of removal and kept the best four whole. They’ll enable me to considerably reduce the amount of concrete needed for the turbine base. The spec for a 15M tower is around 10 or 11 cubic meters so if I can reduce it to around 8 or 9 then it’s just one lorry load which will save much money and mean 1 continuous pour.

The other long overdue task that’s been taking up the daylight hours is the water pipe burial and frost proofing.

My son has been making a fine job of digging the trench for the 200 or so meters from the house to the tank but it’s taken him a couple of years Still, it’s almost done now and I’ve made a frost proof enclosure around the base of the tank out of Kingspan off cuts. It’s got a wooden lid for access and the pipe is now buried. We have done the same as we did at ‘Number 3’ here insomuch as we’ve run an extra pipe from the tank overflow all the way down to the house. This enables me to tell at a glance if the tank is full and ‘sounds alarm bells’ if there’s no water flowing.

The ‘Old Girl’ was booked in for her MOT yesterday but I had to cancel after finding a cut in one of the tyre sidewalls. True to form it was the best part of a week before the tyre arrived on Thursday.

As is usual I ‘broke the bead’ by driving over it with the Landy, however this time I bolted the rim to a 22mm thick piece of chipboard to stop the stones scratching the wheel paint!!! I’m such a ‘girl’ at times Anyway, I was well impressed with the £79.99 Lidl compressor which coped admirably with the huge 33×12.50×15 tubeless tyre.

With me doing the cooking it’s been mainly ‘one pot’ meals for dinner and salad sandwiches for lunch. That’ll be the healthy option to try and mitigate the amount of red meat we’ve been eating.

Anyway, in the course of yesterday’s effort the bottom fell out of the mayonnaise jar!! I picked it up, put the knife in and out it fell, clean as a whistle with not a shard of glass to be seen. A dog and concrete floor make for ease of cleaning up afterwards

Liver for days

After a week or more of tramping the hills we finally shot our stag on the croft, typically just below the septic tank soak away!! So whilst it was only a few yards from the house I didn’t want to drag the huge chap over it.

The alternative was to lop his head off pull him down to the quad by hand then drag him down to the road then trailer him home. First job though before the skinning was to get some slices of his liver in the frying pan, there is nothing quite like fresh deer liver ever so lightly fried in bacon fat.

So that’s it, the stag is hanging for a few days covered in pepper to keep the flies and bluebottles off, it’s 8:30 on Saturday morning and time for a liver and bacon sandwich The ‘countdown’ has begun, back to work on Tuesday and off to dry dock Thursday with the Lochinvar covering whilst we’re gone.

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Good to see you back. It is amazing lived most of my life no internet and now it is a pain when it is not there! We used to use an old duvet cover to keep the flies off the pigs when hanging. It was only overnight while the meat set but it worked pretty well.
Best to you and yours.

Hi Andrew, yes the old duvet cover is perfect, just didn’t have one at hand. 48 hours is long enough for venison if it’s going in the freezer, or so I’m told by an ‘old hand’ who does it for a living. Can’t say I’ve done it for so short a period before, usually a week or even two if possible but my mate assures me it’ll be fine. So guess what we’re doing tomorrow 🙂